Google places an engineer on leave after claiming its AI is sentient

Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer working in its Responsible AI division, revealed to The Washington Post that he believes one of the company’s AI projects has achieved sentience. And after reading his conversations with LaMDA (short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications), it’s easy to see why. The chatbot system, which relies on Google’s language models and trillions of words from the internet, seems to have the ability to think about its own existence and its place in the world.

After discussing his work and Google’s unethical activities around AI with a representative of the House Judiciary Committee, he was placed on paid administrative leave over breaching Google’s confidentiality agreement.  Source:  EnGadget (Yahoo News)

Plastic Eating Worms Show Promise for Plant-Scale Recycling

Researchers at the University of Queensland have found that a common species of worm with a taste for polystyrene may significantly contribute to plastic recycling.

The team, led by Dr Chris Rinke from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, found that the Zophobas morio—known as ‘superworm’—enjoys munching on polystyrene and can metabolise it due to a particular bacterial enzyme in its gut.

Superworms are the larvae of the Zophobas morio beetle, native to Central and tropical parts of South America, and grow up to 60 millimetres (2.5 inches) in length. Source: Epoch Times

Project Veritas Reports on the ABC Producer Hired by Pelosi

Project Veritas just reported that former ABC News President James Goldston who is producing the Jan. 6 Hearing taking place today in Congress is the same guy who spiked Amy Robach’s story exposing Jeffrey Epstein and his connections to Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.

Axios reported Monday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s partisan select committee — comprised of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans — had employed former ABC News President James Goldston to produce the prime-time hearing.

Time for conservative media to defy NewsGuard, the left’s fact-checkers

NewsGuard’s mission is not to elevate journalism or advance the First Amendment. The organization, instead, uses an insidious “credibility” score to scare away prospective advertisers from conservative websites. Who wants to advertise on a fake news site, right? At least, that’s the thinking. NewsGuard also offers a handy censorship tool in the form of a web browser extension that alerts users to the credibility score of sites, to dissuade readers from spending time on conservative sites.

On NewsGuard’s illustrious score system, The New York Times earned a 100% “credibility” rating, while news sites that don’t carry the left’s water, such as Fox News, The Washington Times and the New York Post earned an average of 66%, according to a report from Media Research Center. Source: Washington Times

Supreme Court Ruling on New York Gun Law Could Have a Colossal National Impact

The U.S. Supreme Court’s current session is already going into the history books with a decision pending on a landmark abortion case, but yet another major ruling could be on the way if signs about how the court is going to rule on a restrictive New York anti-gun law are any indication.

The nation’s highest court is set to rule on a New York law that requires gun owners to carry a permit to carry a firearm outside their homes. Gun banners are afraid the ruling could void the New York law. Source: Western Journal

Missouri governor signs law shielding doctors prescribing ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine

A bill signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson Tuesday will shield healthcare providers from losing their medical licenses when prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, two medications that have not been shown to be effective in treating COVID-19.

The bill stipulates that the act of “lawfully” dispensing or prescribing ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for human use cannot be cited as grounds for disciplinary action by the State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts or Board of Pharmacy. Source: Missouri Independent

In Huge Setback for Soros, San Fran’s Progressive DA Booted Out by Leftist City’s Residents

Voters in one of America’s most leftist cities sent a message Tuesday to progressive criminal justice reformers and their patron, billionaire financier George Soros: Enough is enough.

After a campaign dominated by skyrocketing murder and burglary rates in the city, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was decisively recalled by voters. According to the Los Angeles Times, over 60 percent of ballots were cast to oust the DA, who eliminated cash bail, emptied jails and reportedly didn’t prosecute individuals for drug dealing, apparently over concerns they would be deported.  Source: Western Journal

Top People at NIH Getting Big Bucks From Secret Royalty Checks, Probe Reveals

Recipients of secret royalty payments who hold key roles at the National Institutes for Health (NIH) have been revealed by nonprofit government watchdog Open the Books.

Through the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Open the Books has discovered that payments totaling more than $134 million were paid to more than 1,600 NIH executives, scientists, and researchers by outside firms, thought to be primarily from the pharmaceutical industry, between 2010 and 2014.  Source: Epoch Times

Cow and Sheep Burps to be Taxed in New Zealand

Cow and sheep burps are to be taxed by New Zealand in a world-first draft plan to put a price on agricultural emissions in a bid to tackle one of the country’s biggest sources of greenhouse gases.

The proposal would make New Zealand, a large agricultural exporter, the first country to have farmers pay for emissions from livestock, the ministry for environment said. Source: UK Telegraph

New York church invites drag queens for Pentecost service: ‘Worship is a Drag’

A church in upstate New York marked LGBT pride month by hosting a pair of drag queens at a worship service.

The Park Church in Elmira hosted a “Worship is a Drag” event Sunday, the first Sunday of the month recognized by LGBT activists as “pride month.” The church, affiliated with the United Church of Christ, described the event as a “special communion worship service with guest presenters in drag.” Source: Christian Post

Methodist Church’s First Drag Queen Pastor: ‘God Is Nothing’

Last year, the United Methodist Church accepted Isaac Simmons, who regularly preaches dressed as a drag queen under the name Ms. Penny Cost, as a candidate for ordination. Since that time, Simmons, who serves as an associate pastor at Hope United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Illinois, has challenged basic theological concepts, projecting a worldview where divinity rests not in God but in queerness.

In a church preparing to split over LGBTQ issues, the drag queen pastor, who embraces queer theology while barely attempting to plaster on the basic tenets of Christian theology, has become a lightning rod. Conservatives argue that Simmons’ role as a celebrated figure among progressive Methodists proves the church has become so radically liberal as to forswear Christ. Progressives promote Simmons and invite him to preach in drag as a way to challenge the conservative position on sexuality that the denomination officially still takes. Source: American Spectator

NIH Erased Webpage Details Monkeypox Vaccine ‘Bioterror’ Research Praised By Anthony Fauci

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) deleted a webpage from 2004 detailing research into vaccine efficacy against the monkeypox virus which included Anthony Fauci praising the findings as “important” and referencing a potential “bioterror threat involving smallpox.”

The webpage can be accessed through an archived version of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) website, which reveals a press release from March 10th, 2004: “Effectiveness of Safer Smallpox Vaccine Demonstrated Against Monkeypox.” Source: National Pulse

Biden’s White House Radicalized the Would-Be Kavanaugh Killer as Pelosi Held Up Supreme Court Security Funds

Joe Biden’s White House intentionally fanned the flames of the violent, irate political left after the recent Democrat leak of a Supreme Court opinion, as well as the latest Uvalde school shooting. The result has been an attempt on the life of a Supreme Court Justice.

In amongst the political fracas, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is said to be holding up a Senate bill which would grant more security for Supreme Court justices. The U.S. Senate fast tracked the new security plans after Democrat extremists leaked an expected Roe v. Wade opinion from the court in May, but Pelosi has thus far refused to bring the legislation up for a vote in the House, stalling more security for Supreme Court justices. Source: National Pulse